From My Romance by Gordon Lish
"...as you can probably see, or saw at least as I walked up here, my trousers are excessively large, I wear these trousers that are lavishly large, and it is sometimes no easy business, I can tell you, fetching anything back up from these pockets—sometimes to find something, to get your hand on something, you have to really reach around inside these unusually large pockets. Did I tell you I used to slip tenths into these pockets?—and that nobody at Knopf—that is where I work, at the publishing house that is a division of Random House and that is known as Alfred A. Knopf, and then, before that at Esquire, before I worked at Knopf I worked at the magazine known as Esquire—did I yet make the point this evening that I was able to get a tenth of whiskey into these pockets without anybody at Knopf or at Esquire—or so I like to think, at least—ever being any the wiser? Or pints or half-pints or whatever they were--because with trousers like these, you could really hide things..."
Also,
"...there was a little tiny refrigerator, a sort of pint-sized refrigerator, a little Crosley refrigerator, there with us in the little living room. Which is to say that it was right there in the middle of the room with us, right there with us...Well, how could I not notice that this little refrigerator was a Crosley? I mean, first imagine the circumstances—death and so forth. And there it was, sitting right there with us there in the living room and not, as one would expect, in the kitchen. Bear in mind, please, that I was ten years old at the time and that I had therefore seen my fair share of refrigerators. After all, you go home to somebody's house after school for milk and cookies and a look at the house, it never fails but that you make yourself aware of that household's make of refrigerator. Granted, this might have been a peculiar form of attention for a boy, a concern of any kind with the makes of things. But I can positively attest to sitting in the kitchens of other people's houses and making a point of making myself aware of which company made the refrigerator. You know, Westinghouse, Kelvinator, Norge, Coldpoint, Amana, Admiral, Frigidaire, General Electric--these were the makes of refrigerator I think I probably knew about.... And a Crosley, a refrigerator called a Crosley, this was certainly a novelty to me, I can tell you. which made it queerly exhilarating, I think—a new make of refrigerator, a Crosley."
Lish in recent news:
In Slate
In NYT
Also,
"...there was a little tiny refrigerator, a sort of pint-sized refrigerator, a little Crosley refrigerator, there with us in the little living room. Which is to say that it was right there in the middle of the room with us, right there with us...Well, how could I not notice that this little refrigerator was a Crosley? I mean, first imagine the circumstances—death and so forth. And there it was, sitting right there with us there in the living room and not, as one would expect, in the kitchen. Bear in mind, please, that I was ten years old at the time and that I had therefore seen my fair share of refrigerators. After all, you go home to somebody's house after school for milk and cookies and a look at the house, it never fails but that you make yourself aware of that household's make of refrigerator. Granted, this might have been a peculiar form of attention for a boy, a concern of any kind with the makes of things. But I can positively attest to sitting in the kitchens of other people's houses and making a point of making myself aware of which company made the refrigerator. You know, Westinghouse, Kelvinator, Norge, Coldpoint, Amana, Admiral, Frigidaire, General Electric--these were the makes of refrigerator I think I probably knew about.... And a Crosley, a refrigerator called a Crosley, this was certainly a novelty to me, I can tell you. which made it queerly exhilarating, I think—a new make of refrigerator, a Crosley."
Lish in recent news:
In Slate
In NYT
posted by jw at
5:46 PM
2 Comments:
...and the point is...
All right.
The point is, I liked those passages (and a few others in the book) and that I had no expectation of anyone challenging my tastes or even asking for an explanation. And it's happened twice lately and man, I don't know you.
I liked how Lish went into a great deal of detail where he did while neglecting other things. I liked looking at the page after having read how particular the author was in every detail of the finished work. I liked to look at the deep margins and wonder if he intended me to write anything in them (Probaby not.) I liked that so much of the text was spent on repetition and elaboration and so little on advancement of any kind—and that so many things that seemed so important faded into the background.
In so many words, I liked how little and how much he said in so many words.
But, hey. I'm not a scholar and I'm hardly a writer and I just post the things that I like on the internet and people can read them or not, I suppose, but I always hope that people will read them. More, I hope they'll like them for the same or different reasons that I like them and that maybe we don't have to talk about it unless we're drinking cider on the porch and there's nothing else to talk about.
And man, it's the internet. Go look at some porn.
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